Review of Escape Room (2019) by Metadude — 28 Apr 2019

I went into this excited about the premise, but left disappointed by the execution. Make no mistake, the focal point of this movie isn't about cool rooms, interesting puzzles, or challenging clues to overcome - it's about the motivations of 6 of the most unlikable characters you may ever see in a film. It suffers from 'little kid trying to be an adult'-syndrome similar to how when a 12-year-old learns something is edgy they do it CONSTANTLY to seem like an adult to the point of doing it to an immature degree. The movie wants you to know that it's mature and that the stakes are high not through the traps that threaten to painfully injure or kill, but through the characters who fire off so many F-bombs, S-bombs, MFers, etc.throughout the entire film that it probably averages over 4 per minute. It's like being on early Xbox Call of Duty teamspeak with a 12-year-old. It added nothing to the movie and made me lose respect for the script writers.

I told you that the main cast of 6 is very unlikable, but some are clearly worse than others. Because of the traps/inherent danger of the puzzles there are some deaths in the cast. A big problem is the most tolerable characters are the first to go, while the super annoying characters remain til the very end - leaving you with maximum suffering. Combine this with some really culturally out-of-touch moments like when they refer to a "Games Master" (ANYONE knows that the correct term is Gamemaster with no 'S', etc.).

The movie begins with the worst trope in the entire world - a scene from later in the movie, and then flashes back to "6 months earlier" or whatever and the chronological progression begins. The problem is this removes a TON of possible suspense and excitement from a genre LITERALLY called suspense - it's the whole point of movies like this. You now know that this character you saw in the scene will be safe until you are caught up in the plot to that point again. There is no concern over them being at risk from the danger elements, they have an invincible shield constantly. It removes so much possible excitement and in exchange we get NOTHING for it.

For a movie focused on the characters and their motivations they seemed to go extremely lazy on this aspect. A super successful businessman with a private office, multiple homes, and luxurious gifts would not be enticed to play some novelty game with strangers just for $10,000. A character that is too shy to even look up or respond when another character says "hello" to them, 30 minutes later is shouting **** at people and performing martial arts levels of combat out of nowhere. The shyness was not an act, the character has no previous combat training, etc. It's all just very unbelievable.

I do want to say something good about it though - some of the puzzles and rooms were very interesting or had creative traps. Most likely the entire movie budget went to visual/special effects and that part is well done so they are often quite imposing to behold.

My final complaint is the unrealistic representation of races in this movie. The driven, successful, measured, intelligent businessman and the hyper intelligent genius-level prodigy scholar are both black - when in real life blacks have the lowest average IQ of all of the races by far. It's made even worse when you factor in the male/female IQ differences and the fact they made a black female the most intelligent character in the entire film (she's also on the poster art so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise) is just a step too far to suspend belief. The white characters, while having the highest average IQ of the races in real life, are represented by a jittery failure of a pothead, a backwater redneck who doesn't even know what an escape room is, and a military vet that is severely and constantly crippled by anxiety (this last one is a bit realistic so I'll let it slide.) I really enjoyed the Indian kid and wish we had more time with him as a character. He had both positive and negative stereotypes which fleshed him out a lot more than the Mary Sue black girl who can do no wrong.